It’s just past 2:00 pm out here in Venice Beach. The sun is out and a cool breeze is blowing from the Pacific Ocean. Outside my window, surfers are walking towards the beach . . . a young woman glides by on her bicycle in daisy dukes and a tank top. There’s a bum lazing around in the shade of a dumpster. But I can’t enjoy the warm spring weather. I’m quarantined in my apartment, my skin is crawling with tiny parasitic mites that have tunneled into my skin and have turned me into a giant breeding vat. I’ve barely slept in days, and I scratched myself raw. And I owe it all to Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa and the fine men and women of the LAPD. Not only did they throw me in jail for covering a political protest, but they gave me scabies, too.

Until a few days ago, I thought my scabies was just a gnarly poison oak rash that I had picked up in the Santa Monica mountains after losing the trail and having to cut through the overgrown backyards of multimillion dollar mansions. For weeks the rash kept getting worse and worse, and I finally went to a doctor to get some relief. But it turned out that poison oak was the least of my worries.

“You have scabies,” said the doc, sucking in his breath through his teeth and shaking his head. It took him no more than 30 seconds to diagnose my condition. “The track marks are a dead giveaway,” he said, and pointed out a couple of elongated welts about a half-inch long creeping up the side of my right ring finger. These “tracks marks” were actually burrows made by mother-parasites as they tunneled right below the surface of my skin and laid eggs in the process. I had dozens of similar track marks of all shapes and sizes on both hands. As I stared at my hands in disgust, the doc moved to the sink and violently scrubbed his hands with medical soap. Our contact was minimal, but he wasn’t taking any chances. And for good reason.

For those who don’t know, scabies is a highly contagious skin condition caused by an infestation from tiny, burrowing arachnid parasites called the Sarcoptes scabiei. The little buggers use their pudgy claw-limbs and stringy suction-cup grapples to latch on to your body during skin-to-skin contact and then instantly mobilize for a full colonization. Their goal: to turn your dermal layer into a vertically integrated parasite production machine. You are their food, their shelter and their toilet. Unlike many other parasites, scabies crabs go through all of their reproductive steps on one host—as in “you.” Mother-parasites use incisors on their hind legs to plow your skin like a fertile field and lay their eggs just below the surface. After the egglings mature into larvae, they burst through to the surface of the skin and look for a suitable place to start burrowing again, this time to drill personal breeding vats where they will mature into full-grown, fertile adult parasites.

Here’s what two scabies parasites look like copulating:

And here is a description of their chitinous sexual organs and mating patterns from A treatise on the parasites and parasitic diseases of the domesticated animals. Note the “vulvo-anal slit”:

The male organ is situated between the two last logs, on the middle line. It comprises a small number of strong chitinous pieces that form a complex genital armor, and which protects or directs the penis. Behind this arrangement there are often two circular suckers, placed symmetrically on each side of the middle line, and which serve to fix the male to the female. The posterior border, in regard to these two copulatory suckers, has usually two prolongations or lobes furnished with several bristles, which may have a share in copulation.

In the female the anus serves also as vulva; and for this purpose, at a certain period, it assumes large dimensions, being then designated the vulvo-anal slit. When the young female has become fecundated, and is therefore an ovigerous female, this orifice becomes of a greater size, and is a special organ for ovulation. This ovulating vulva (the tocostoma of Railliet) is seen on the inferior surface of the cephalothorax, at or behind the second pair of legs, appearing as a transverse slit with wrinkled lips, and sometimes provided with accessory chitinous pieces.

All that construction work, copulation and defecation sends your immune system into red alert mode, triggering a monster rash and a crazy itch that’s impossible to ignore and not scratch raw. If left untreated, the scabies repeat the whole process over and over again until your skin hardens into a crusty scabies super-colony that could take months—or even years—to eradicate.

Luckily, mine hadn’t progressed that far. But by the time I saw the doctor, the parasite crabs had colonized every major part of my body. There were painful reddish welts on my shins, palms, soles, elbows, back of my knees and just about every finger on my hands—and I can feel the tiny welts on my fingertips hitting the keyboard keys as I type these words right now. My heels were encrusted with a scaly hard rash—a mixture of scabies track marks and poison oak. As I sit and write this, five days after my diagnosis, the scabies crabs have established a brutally itchy beachhead on my scrotum and have even managed to colonize my right ear lobe.

I’ve been sleeping most of the past week on the couch, but it’s too late: Looks like my wife is beginning to show symptoms of a scabies infestation as well. This morning, she woke up with itchy, puffy track marks all over her hands and fingers . . .

According to my doctor, scabies parasites don’t usually attack anywhere higher than the neckline. But mine got a big boost from the poison oak. The rash I picked up in the Santa Monica mountains covered my shins, calves and ankles and oozed with a clear white liquid. It was on fire, and before long I was scratching my legs raw. The mites loved that—it was like tenderized meat. Plus, with all the scratching that I did, they hitched free rides to just about every part of my body, colonizing even a far-flung flesh mass like my right earlobe. They also got another boost from the cortisone cream that I started using in the hopes of reducing the itching. That proved to be a big mistake. There’s nothing scabies love more than cortisone, which helps soften and marinate the skin, and sends scabies parasites into a tunneling and egg-laying frenzy.

My big question for the doctor was: Where the hell could I have picked it up?

The doctor didn’t seem to care very much, though, but just shrugged his shoulders, simply telling me to wash my bedding and clothing, and then started to write out a prescription for a powerful pesticide lotion that I had to apply all over my body.

In retrospect, I can understand why he hesitated to discuss where I might have picked up the parasite: Turns out most doctors consider scabies to be a sexually transmitted disease in first-world adult populations. He probably figured I picked up the scabies at some low-rent border brothel in Tijuana or maybe while cruising for anonymous bathroom sex in West Hollywood, and didn’t want to waste his time prying into the dark recess of my perverted sex life. Who was he to judge, anyway? Better to just give me the pesticide cream, and send me off to have a good time . . . . And who could blame him, right?

But his hesitation instantly melted away when I mentioned that a few months earlier I had spent a couple of days in jail. “Yeah, that’s where you picked it up,” he said, repeating it twice. But our ten health insurance-covered minutes were up, and he pushed me out the door. “Come back in ten days so I can check up on you.”

As soon as I got home, I covered myself head to toe with the anti-scabies pesticide cream and I started researching the disease . . . . The more I learned, the more I agreed with the doctor: all the evidence pointed to me picking up the parasite sometime during my two-day stay at the Los Angeles Metro Jail.

Just before the arrest…

I was arrested in the early hours of November 30, 2011, in downtown Los Angeles while attempting to report on the LAPD’s paramilitary eviction raid on Occupy LA. I was handcuffed with my hands behind my back and frogmarched to a prisoner transport bus, and spent the next two days bouncing around the central jail complex just a few blocks from where I was arrested. There were maybe a hundred of us there, and we spent hours sleeping on the floor of a prison garage, hands handcuffed behind our back. We were crammed into tiny holding cells with no place to sit or lie down except on the floor right next to the toilet. And I remember more than once waking up in a confused daze and looking up the urine-stained toilet bowl hovering above my head no more than a foot away. I spent my last day in jail, passed out on a prison cot with my head tucked under a ratty blanket to blot out the bright lights that stayed on 24 hours a day. Where did I pick it up? It could have been anywhere, but I think the bedding was the most likely infection vector.

The timing of my incarceration perfectly matched the incubation period of the scabies mite: I was in jail about three months before the first scabies symptoms showed up, which is in line with all the scabies literature. There is often a long delay between infestation and symptoms, and it could take a few weeks to a few months, or more, before you realize that your epidermis has been turned into a giant breeding container for a colony of parasite crabs.

I wouldn’t be the first one to pick up scabies in jail. Fact is, jails and prisons flare up with scabies outbreaks all the time. The CDC specifically names jails as one of the top destinations for scabies infestations. No sex required. It’s just a matter of probability.

A quick search of recent news brings up a couple of cases over the past few months in lock-up facilities around the country, including one happening right now at the Southern Regional Jail in West Virginia. The infestation has put the facility on lockdown and forced inmates to make their court appearances via video hookup. And that’s just what’s being reported in the news. Scabies outbreaks in prisons aren’t exactly front page—or any page—material, so it’s not like anyone notices or even cares. But go to prisontalk.com, the premier online forum for wives and families of people serving time, and you’ll read a whole lot of horror stories about scabies, as well as constant discussions and alerts about jails and prisons going on lockdown to stop scabies outbreaks–which seem to happen with alarming frequency.

The few stories that do cross the “important news” threshold either have to be particularly shocking or have some sort of sympathetic angle, like this AP story from 2006 about the disgusting conditions in California’s juvenile prison system highlighted by a lawsuit. Among other things, it appears that juvvies across the state, including Los Angeles, weren’t property sanitizing dirty laundry or even caring to wash shit stains out of dirty underwear, a practice that made it extremely easy for kids to pick up scabies, as well as lice, genital herpes and a bunch of other nasty parasites.

Of course this story just skims the surface of the problem. It’s not just scabies, but America’s barbaric Abu Ghraib penal system itself.

It was just a few years ago that a panel of federal judges ruled that California’s prison system is so overcrowded that the state was judged to be violating the Eight Amendment, which protects Americans against cruel and unusual punishment, just by keeping inmates incarcerated. According to the 2009 ruling, California’s prisons resembled third-world dungeons, where prisoners are triple-stacked and put anywhere there’s room: hallways, gyms, utility closets . . . and where infectious diseases roam unchecked and sick inmates die for lack of treatment. The reason: 150,000 inmates were housed in a system designed for only 80,000. At the time, the judges ordered California to immediately reduce its prison population by 25 percent, but the ruling was appealed. It took two years for the Supreme Court to uphold the decision, which it did on May 2011. But the news didn’t get much media traction . . . No, it seems we care more about a few hundred prisoners in Guantanamo than we do about the 2.2 million nameless inmates rotting in jails and prisons across the country, many of whom are serving time for non-violent offenses.

Out of jail, thinking that the worst was behind me…

But I wasn’t thinking about this when my family bailed me out. And scabies didn’t even cross my mind. I was glad to be out, and about the only thing I could think about was whether or not my car had been towed—and if it was, how much it would cost and how I would get home. Other than that, I considered myself lucky to walk away unscathed. Sure, I was sleep deprived and dehydrated, and my wrists were raw from the plastic handcuffs. But that was nothing compared with what many others had to endure in jail. Some had been hit with “less-lethal” bullets from shotguns. A bunch of people had been stomped and bloodied by amped-up cops, and were denied medical care in jail. I found out later that day that a fellow journalist had been viciously attacked by a gang of police for having the nerve to protest their violent treatment of the press, and that scores of people had been locked in cages on a prison bus for seven hours, forced to urinate in their seats and then remain in their own filth for hours, watching their urine mix together and slosh around on the floor as guards drove the bus aimlessly around LA and even stopped for a Starbucks/Pollo Loco snack break.

Here’s how Deirdre, who was not even inside the Occupy LA encampment when she was arrested, described her experience in a comment posted on The eXiled:

Our group of women were fed twice in 2 days (vegan or otherwise), not allowed soap, toothbrushes, showers, sanitizer, and in some cases, toilet paper.. some were denied our medicines. We were kept on a bus for nearly 8 hours with our hands ziptied (and for the person above talking about handcuffs not being fuzzy, these weren’t handcuffs, think about the way rubberbands make your fingers blue.. [sic] closer to that, for 8+ hours, not what they’re intended for, zipties are meant to be temporary). Forced to pee on the seats of the bus whiled the guards (sheriffs) laughed at us, denying us water/food while stopping at starbucks/el pollo loco. When we begged them to show their humanity they blasted Christmas music so loudly we couldn’t hear eachother.. for 6 hours straight. We were ziptied around 1:45, and not booked until 5pm the next day. Until 5 pm, we got no phone call. We were never read our rights, I never spoke to a lawyer…

Yep, when I got out of jail, I thought I was lucky to walk away more or less unscathed and untraumatized. Little did I know that the LAPD had a special delayed-release surprise waiting for me and my family.

If you have a gun, give it to a friend until this clears up so you won’t be tempted.

Remember that this bullshit system is dying. The pigs will fight, because it’s worth fighting for – but their brutality is a sign of their weakness. They know they’re evil fucks and it drives them mad to think they’re on the way down.

Yeah, what @1 said: Something nice for the wife. Lick her the alphabet, as Sam Kinison taught.

But I don’t buy this about cathing the mites in prison. I believe you have an unpublished series of Whore-R stories from Tijuana, and West Hollywood bathroom stalls – but as the politically tendentious writer you are, you decided to scratch them and go for the “boo-hoo-I-don’t-deserve-justice-handed-out-to-me” angle.

4. Euclid | April 13th, 2012 at 9:44 pm

You now, like Rimbaud with his head lice and priests you could always cultivate them to throw at politicians.

Neem oil, 50% with olive oil and a few drops of tea tree oil, coat every millimeter of skin every day for two weeks. Take hot baths with a cup of borax. Then wash all of your clothes in hot water, get your carpets the most industrial cleaning humanly possible, and vacuum-seal your furniture for two weeks. Then destroy capitalism so it never happens again. Got taught this by some amazing and highly-trained punk protest medics a couple years ago.

6. bulfinch | April 13th, 2012 at 10:09 pm

Poison Oak: Tecnu is your friend. That and/or mineral spirits.

Scabies: Don’t let the urgent care doctor’s heebie-jeebies get you down. Crabs and scabies happen to the very best of them:

“… I was sitting in a bar in Mexico and this girl walked in. For some reason, I looked at her. The mood was right. My violins were going. My candle was lit and there it was. Two Mexicans noticed me looking at her and told me in Spanish, ‘Mariposas de amor’ — which literally means ‘butterflies of love.’ I thought to myself, ‘Jesus, what a straight statement for them to make.’ They noticed that something had fluttered inside of me. It was only later that I found out they meant that she had the crabs. But it was worth it, because she was an incredible beauty.” — Lee Marvin, Playboy, January, 1969.

7. whyawannaknow | April 13th, 2012 at 10:33 pm

Hey, just be glad for modern chemistry. The treatment used to be a coal tar and Sulfer shampoo- I remember out dog giving us all scabies in the 70’s. The smell…

8. iCONOCLAST | April 14th, 2012 at 1:46 am

You brave, brave man.

I bet self-immolation looked good at one point, no?

9. Punjabi From Karachi | April 14th, 2012 at 1:59 am

You fucks are fucking insane, stay away from me.

10. Fischbyne | April 14th, 2012 at 2:46 am

American jails are disease incubators. Staph infections, bed bugs, brown recluse spiders, and scabies are rampant. Libertarians love this. “That’s what criminals deserve,” they say, and they get pissed off when jail healthcare starts eating up their taxes. The number of people being sent to jail doesn’t bother them, except for maybe the pot smokers. But in some counties, jail healthcare can approach ten percent of the total budget. Hear libertards scream in counties where detainees have better access to healthcare than the average citizen.

What libertarians don’t realize is that jail health conditions, just like the the social costs of incarceration, impact the rest of society. Bacteria and viruses don’t really care if you’re a hapless jail detainee or a preening elitist fuck.

Shave that beard of you fool! And shave everything you can stand to shave… the little f-ers love hair. Get a magnifying glass and tweezers and kill ’em one by one. As you snap ’em, each crunch will feel like revenge and relief… It may take hours… but its better than goin’ nuts

14. Virgil | April 14th, 2012 at 9:47 am

On the mortgage debt/national debt link on the right – you should check out Steve Keen at debtdeflation.com. He was one of about 6 people who actually predicted the recession.

15. Mason C | April 14th, 2012 at 10:55 am

More disgusting jail stories are in Shaun Attwood’s Hard Time: Life With Sheriff Joe Arpaio in America’s Toughest Jail.

16. Damn dirty red | April 14th, 2012 at 11:31 am

@10 Hey now look they might get mad for non violent offenders, but the good lord knows they don’t care for those violent pot heads you know the darker ones.

17. COCKZONE | April 14th, 2012 at 11:45 am

DUDE YEAH YASHA

ITCHY SCROTUM CLUB!!!!!!!

18. COCKZONE | April 14th, 2012 at 11:49 am

yasha man, i am so glad you posted this. see, sometimes we get real bored here between posts and start going at each other in the comments section. plus, it’s good to know that we have a common affliction.

19. Uncle Sammy Hagar | April 14th, 2012 at 1:24 pm

yeahhh! great comments going today! and this article makes me feel so much better about my eczema.

Now get those taxes finished up, ya procrastinating bum. We gots aircraft carriers to polish.

20. NazBol | April 14th, 2012 at 1:24 pm

you and mark ought to do a writeup comparing your experiences. i believe his scabez went norwegian, though, so you might want to put yourself into a pain cave and cultivate these critters in order to go for the win.

21. NazBol | April 14th, 2012 at 1:28 pm

also make mark write about that time he got arrested in/around victorville. thanks.

22. John Drinkwater | April 14th, 2012 at 7:08 pm

Was it worth it? I’m not sure I could handle prison without having a mental breakdown, scabies or not.

23. Joel Kaza | April 14th, 2012 at 8:04 pm

Sounds awful. I feel for you and the missis. Thanks for the report. Best of luck.

I’d suppose everyone in the mix gets them. Seems it’d be in everyone’s interest to eradicate the problem.

24. Fischbyne | April 14th, 2012 at 9:48 pm

@16 I hear you. Unless the non-violent offenders happen to be dark.

25. Hick | April 15th, 2012 at 12:40 am

I used to work at an animal hospital. When one of us thought we might have picked up scabies, we’d take some of the dog flea shampoo with lindane in it home and wash up.

BTW you can’t use many dog flea shampoos on cats. Cats’ skin is a lot thinner and they’re very sensitive. They’ll get sick or worse.

Basically, if it will cure mange on your dog, it will cure scabies on you.

26. Mark | April 15th, 2012 at 5:57 am

And the authorities claimed that the Occupy camps were a health risk…

27. NazBol | April 15th, 2012 at 8:19 am

i;ve been in prison. it ruled pretty hard. hav this shit called “the spread” which is mighty tasty. lots of solitude.

28. Mudplanet | April 15th, 2012 at 8:29 am

NOTE:

Kwell creme is not applied above the middle of the neck. Do not apply it to your head.

Scabies is cured in eight hours, so it sounds terrible (it’s closely related to mange) but it’s even less bothersome than getting “cooties.”

On the other hand, you can pick up shit like TB in jails and prisons.

29. nestore | April 15th, 2012 at 12:24 pm

@ #1 your right Cor, this PIG system is dying, but they are going to make it a lot worse before it finally goes limp and it wont get any better anyway unless we act to make that happen. For what its worth, Thanks Yahsha Levin for suffering to tell the truth. This PIG society FUCKING HATES the truth and WILL make you suffer for attempting to tell it on them.

Its too bad Breitbart isn’t alive still so you could yell “STOP SCABIE-ING PEOPLE” at him.

On second thought, I’m glad he’s dead.

34. Zhu Bajie | April 16th, 2012 at 3:56 am

@4 As Euclid suggested, pass them on to people you don’t like….

35. The Real Strelnikov | April 16th, 2012 at 4:18 am

That seems to be a thing with jails in America; a lot of them are obsolete and in nasty condition, so getting scabies, lice, etc. is a given.

36. HAHAURFUCKED | April 16th, 2012 at 8:26 am

HAVE TO LOL HARD AT LIBERAL FAGGOT STRIVER POORS GIVING IMMIGRANTS DISEASES FROM THEIR STAY IN OUR IMMIGRANT CONTROL CENTERS. YOU DIDN’T HAVE THESE WIDESPREAD PARASITE INFESTATIONS BEFORE BEING STORED IN USA PRISONS, DID YA MILLIONS OF MEXICO’S FINEST? GO PLAY HENRY DAVID THOREAU IN NORWAY OR SWEDEN!!!

37. 69 Anytime 88 On a Date | April 16th, 2012 at 9:36 am

Are these really parasites or just the average sports fan from Philadelphia?

38. tanya | April 16th, 2012 at 3:37 pm

I’m a comment troll who works in a nice clean office for a boss who lets me take lunches, I never do anything that would get me in trouble because I’m just too cool in a corporate tool way. Yeah, I’m a corporate tool, so what? What’re you gonna do about it, huh?

Anyway, I don’t have the guts to do anything but post bitter resentful comments on sites like yours. To be honest, I worship the ground you walk on.

39. Hick | April 16th, 2012 at 8:37 pm

#28 – I’ve used Kwell shampoo for head lice. Didn’t know they had a cream for scabies. Interesting. Anything that will fix mange on a dog will work for scabies on a human though. As for head lice, I’d just use flea shampoo on those.

#34 – If I could stand the itching, that would be a very fun benefit of having scabies!

Scabies. Fuck. Keep an eye on your loved ones in nursing homes people – they too are notorious scabies breeding grounds. Uncle Sam learned that blankets are the perfect vector for infecting contentious objectors with scabies during the Korean war, according to a Dermatologist I saw once. As other commentors wrote above: Tea tree oil, Neem soap if you can find it, daily warm baths with a few cups of “20 mule team Borax” are your friends. Pay special attention to the areas between your fingers & (where the flesh is most tender) and apply straight Tea Tree oil. Getting itchy just thinking about it. Good luck.

Bah. You didn’t contract scabies in jail. You got it from hanging out with the disgusting #OWS crowd. You should be happy that you didn’t contract any of their even more disgusting diseases that come from not bathing. Me, the only thing I contract are skin burn rashes on my little penis from constantly tugging on it, since the life of a Breitbart groupie is not all that interactive.

44. buthead | April 18th, 2012 at 11:03 am

show us your scabez show us your scabez show us your scabez

45. buthead | April 18th, 2012 at 11:03 am

i got a yeast infection on my penis from tugging it

46. buthead | April 18th, 2012 at 11:04 am

also guys, action item: stay poised for when the breitbart autopsy is released! k thanx

47. Adirondack Patriot | April 18th, 2012 at 11:47 am

Scabies sound like they have achieved in nature what chamber pot runners like myself have been doing by serving the oligarchs—sort of…

Eat off host oligarch

Shelter by host oligarch

Now shitting on host oligarch, I’d never do that. But I would allow my gracious host oligarch to shit on me.

I guess a scabies parasite crab is the better man.

48. buthead | April 18th, 2012 at 1:09 pm

There I was completely itchin’ Swollen up and raw All inside it’s so frustratin’ as I scratch my weiner’s crown Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die So I might as well put some action in my life!

SHOW US YOUR SCABEZ SHOW US YOUR SCABEZ SHOW US YOUR SCABEZ SHOW US YOUR SCABEZ SHOW US YOUR SCABEZ SHOW US YOUR SCABEZ SHOW US YOUR SCABEZ SHOW US YOUR SCABEZ

49. LogicalUS | April 18th, 2012 at 2:28 pm

Just be glad you didn’t contract any of the other occupy “diseases”….rape and death from drugs.

Did your mother not tell ya…type down with comment-serfs and will get billionaire feces bits on your fingers?

The rest of you trolls are nothing like COCKZONE. COCKZONE is my role model. Every day, when I was five, I’d pretend my teacher in class had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I’d quietly breath ‘COCKZONE’

Either that or an actuary.

53. Zhu Bajie | April 23rd, 2012 at 4:31 am

Figure out some way to pass them on to Josh Foust, John Yoo, etc.! Crab lice at the Lib. Party Convention would be fun, too.

54. Claude | April 28th, 2012 at 7:51 pm

One heck of a long way to go to construct a cover story for your wife! 😉

55. bitchybitch | May 6th, 2012 at 9:26 am

commenters, i lub you. you made me laugh so hard.

56. Freddie Holmes | May 9th, 2012 at 3:50 pm

I got scabies in Russia back in 2006. I never figured out the cause. I had a rodent infestation in my flat at the time, so I assumed it was that, but people have since told me that mice don’t carry scabies. Anyway, I had an odd attitude to doctors back then and didn’t get treatment for months, not knowing what it was and thinking it would go away. In the end I figured out it was scabies, and treated it with lyclear. Went away immediately. The key thing to remember is to apply the cream everywhere, including hair roots and under nails.

57. buthead | May 18th, 2012 at 7:48 pm

yeah, so… levine asserts that he caught scabez while in detention and then makes the same mistake mark made a decade earlier by applying cortisone cream. also — just coincidentally — the scabez story idea provides perfect fodder for jacob’s love of writing about parasites and schopenhauerian nasties. yeah.

in other news, my yeasties have gone totally systemic. gotta take diflucan. dick is all fucked up. ballz are all peely. haven’t been able to jerk it for like a month, which is saying something coz i used to jerk it like a dozen times a day. jerked it a few times on totally raw skin 2day tho. hope you’re doing better, tho, jakeboy.

58. t-lee | May 22nd, 2012 at 5:43 pm

Occupy your lives losers…

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